I don’t party. I don’t stay up late. I take naps on the weekend. I don’t drink when I go out. I do relaxing yoga. I’m on first name terms with my chiropractor. My idea of a fun is to stay home and watch movies, maybe have friends over for board games.
I worry what this says about me.
Or, I will worry, after my nap.
---
I’d missed it the first time around, so I figured it was time to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Netflix thought I’d like it, and I’d always meant to watch it eventually. Ten minutes into the first episode, however, Matt had had enough. “I can’t do it,” he said, abandoning me on the couch. “Sorry, babe, but I can’t take it seriously.”
“What do you mean? Is it because they’re angst-driven teenagers? It’s not as bad as Twilight so far.”
“Huh? No, it’s not that. It’s the clothes! The hair! Those computers! This show is just so… so OLD.”
Alone now, I frowned, looking at the show more closely. I honestly hadn’t noticed. The clothes weren’t that bad, were they? And the computers! Why, those looked perfectly normal! Just like the ones at my own high school…
I checked IMDB. When did this show come out? 1997?! That was the year I started high school!
Oh my gosh! I thought. These angst-driven teenagers are my age!
---
“Let me get that for you,” Benjamin said, single-handedly hauling a ladder I could barely move.
“Thanks,” I said, grimacing as I flexed my slightly arthritic left wrist. Handy as he is to have around, sometimes it’s hard having a younger friend. Listening to him talk about staying up late. Helping him suss out his term papers. Watching him eat 1500 calories in a single sitting. I constantly wonder, “Was I ever that young?”
“I saw your parents at the party,” I told him after he’d put the ladder away. The party had been an official thing: the library board had been there, and I had to dress up for it. There were cocktail weenies.
“Yeah?”
“Did you realize, as far as age goes, I’m like halfway between you and your parents?”
He nodded, cradling his chin and looking thoughtfully toward the floor. “Hmm… Right, I guess that’s true…” Then he shrugged. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, you act more like my friends do, with the gaming and immature conversations.”
“How is that supposed to make it better?”
“Well, you also own your own home and pay your own bills, so there’s that. Oh, and you usually pay for the pizza.”
---
“I know exactly what you mean!” said my friend Bill* when I told him about it later. “I was at the store recently and there was a mom and daughter out – looked about 20 and 40. And the daughter was pretty cute – like, if I were unwed, you know? – but then I thought… The mom’s hotter… and I was like, Oh my God, what just happened? I’m old!”
“By the way, if you ever blog this, just leave out my name please.”
*Name has been changed.
---
“What are you thinking now?” Matt asked me at breakfast.
“I was thinking…”
“Yes?”
“You know the bit in Star Wars where Yoda tells Luke, ‘When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not’?”
“Okay…”
“If we took a picture of Mark Hamill from back then and compared it to how he looks now, and then we used a computer to age him another 870 years along the same lines, I bet Yoda was right.”
Matt sighed and patted my shoulder. “Yoda is already right.”
“Oh, be nice,” I said. “We may not look that great in 900 years either.”
Though I do plan to.
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